


Unimaginable (or, Six Different Flavors of Holiday-Themed Lip Balm)

by juniper_and_lamplight



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Christmas, Established Relationship, F/F, Falling In Love, Gift Giving, gratuitous bibliography included, shameless holiday fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 09:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17118833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniper_and_lamplight/pseuds/juniper_and_lamplight
Summary: “She’s not the sort of person Farah would’ve expected to fall for, if she’d expected to fall for anyone, and just looking at her fills Farah's chest with a wild, buoyant tenderness, like her heart might actually be expanding. It’s the opposite of a panic attack, though it leaves her with the same dry mouth and racing pulse.”Featuring gift-wrapping strategies (or lack thereof), kissing on the living room rug, and some terrible lip balm.





	Unimaginable (or, Six Different Flavors of Holiday-Themed Lip Balm)

**Author's Note:**

> I envisioned this fic as an unofficial sequel to [Lattice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16706815), but it can also be read and understood on its own.  
> Many thanks to RhondaHurley for the parenthetical title, as well as for proofreading and putting up with me in general.

Farah approaches gift-wrapping with the same precision that she brings to any task worth doing right.

The clean, rectangular shape of the books she's chosen for everyone on her Christmas list are perfect for her preferred tape-free method—wrapping each book is like fitting it neatly into a custom-sized envelope. The creasing, folding, and tucking is a satisfying process; it could even be soothing if it weren't for Tina, who sits next to Farah on the Farah's living room floor, clad in an oversized hoodie and reindeer-patterned boxers, attacking gift-wrapping with the opposite of a strategy. She appears to be grabbing each gift and applying whatever type of wrapping is nearest to hand, regardless of whether or not it's practical. Farah can feel the frown forming on her face as she watches Tina transform a "World's Gayest Detective" mug into a misshapen tissue-paper bowling ball, the edges of the paper gathered at the top by three clashing colors of ribbon.

Tina looks up at her as she curls the ribbon. "You're doing the thing again." 

"Oh." Farah tries to relax her face into a more neutral expression. Tina keeps looking at her, as if she's waiting for something, and Farah feels both known and annoyed as she lets the words spill out. "It's just—who wraps presents like that!? How is Dirk even supposed to _un_ wrap it?"

Tina shrugs. "Enthusiastically?"

Farah opens her mouth to argue, but can't actually fault that logic. She sees Tina's grin from the edge of her vision as she picks up the next book from her stack of gifts. Then she hears the rustle of a plastic shopping bag, and is immediately wary. 

"Nope! Nope, once was enough. I'm _not_ playing this game with you, Tina."

"Alright, we can agree that the caramel creme was gross, but what abooooouuut…" Tina squints at the tube of lip balm she's just pulled out of the bag, "...candy cane cocoa?"

Farah doesn't even look up. "Yes, because what I want in the dead of winter is a _cold mint_ sensation on my lips."

"Maybe it'll make you feel all _tingly_."

 _You do that to me anyway_ , Farah thinks. Tina leans closer, so that Farah can smell the cloying chocolate-mint of her lips. 

"Okay, okay, I see how it is," Tina says. "You'll go down on me until I come four times, but taste-testing my flavored lip balm is a hard pass?"

Farah feels heat bloom under her skin as she flashes back to earlier that day: Tina, spread out on her bed, one hand fisted in the plum-colored duvet, the other sweat-damp and clinging to Farah's shoulder. The flex of scar tissue and tattoos across Tina's skin as she panted, ribs heaving. The tickle of Tina's pubic hair against her nose, the tang of her scent, the heady, human taste of her as Farah alternated broad strokes with teasing flicks of her tongue until Tina's hips lifted and her thighs clenched against Farah's ears, muffling Tina's shout. Farah had felt a reflexive throb between her own legs, where Tina's fingers had so recently been curled inside her; even now, sitting on the living room floor and bickering about flavored lip balm, the memory makes her squirm in her flannel pajama pants.

Still, Farah's not giving in on the lip balm taste-test. "One of those things is clearly preferable to the other, and I didn't hear you complaining this morning." She's aiming for coy, but can't keep the smugness out of her voice. "You know I like to be...thorough."

" _Yeah_ you do." Tina uses her teeth to tear the seal off another tube of lip balm, spitting out the piece of plastic with an appreciative leer. Farah rolls her eyes and momentarily marvels that _this_ is the person she's chosen.

"And anyway, _you_ are not made of weird-smelling, unpronounceable chemicals."

"Nah, not anymore," Tina agrees. 

"Why do you even _have_ six different flavors of holiday-themed lip balm?"

"Found a multi-pack at an airport store." Tina applies the sugar cookie flavor over the candy cocoa before grimacing and wiping her lips on the back of her hand. Farah shakes her head.

"You know, most people just buy trashy magazines and gum at the airport. Only you could enter the nightmare of airport shopping and emerge with something so ridiculous."

"Not true! First of all," Tina holds up one finger, "Dirk could _totally_ find something more ridiculous. And second," she holds up another finger, "I was only boredom-shopping because _someone_ —" she points both fingers at Farah "—was late picking me up. You should be grateful I didn't get one of those humongous buckets of popcorn. Again."

"Only because you know you can't carry one _and_ your luggage at the same time." 

"Touché."

"And seriously, Tina, I _really_ am sorry I was late. But we'd just traced all those sick parrots back to the tropical fruit smugglers, and I couldn't exactly drive to the airport with guava splattered all over my windshield, and—"

"It's cool, I understand." Tina rubs a soothing hand between Farah's shoulder blades.

"I just..." Farah sighs. "I just hate that it requires _logistics_ to spend time with you." So far they've only tiptoed around the idea of Tina moving to Seattle, and Farah's afraid to push. But they both know that Farah's never moving to Bergsberg, and they're both getting tired of suitcases and airports and…

...and Tina is being suspiciously quiet, apprehension written on her all-too-readable face. 

Farah gives her a questioning look, and Tina sheepishly reaches for her bag of gifts. "Okay, I know we _said_ we were only doing one gift for each other, and that we're waiting for actual Christmas, but I _kiiiinda_ thought you might want this one now?" From the bag, Tina pulls out a flimsy cardboard shirt box, mercifully unwrapped except for a single ribbon tied around it. "It's for you to open, but it's really for both of us."

Farah accepts the box with cautious curiosity. "Okay, but you _do_ remember our talk about how sex toys are not appropriate gifts for major holidays?"

"Look at you with the filthy mind!" Tina gives her a playful shove. "Now c'mon, open the dang present!"

Farah tugs the ribbon free from the box and lifts the lid. Inside is a mess of tissue paper, and inside the tissue paper nestles a plastic ID badge. Farah picks it up for a closer look. "Tevetino, Tina. Seattle Police Department, School Emphasis Officer?" Her eyes flick over to Tina. "Is this real?”

Tina's smile is small but hopeful. "Yeah. I applied just to see what would happen, and...this is what happened. I snuck out to sign the paperwork and get the ID while you guys were finishing up with that parrot dude."

Farah's voice has vanished, and Tina takes her silence as a cue to keep talking. "I start in January, at a middle school that’s not too far from here, and I'll still have nights and weekends and summers to work with the agency, sometimes, and now might be a good time for _you_ to say something, because you're starting to freak me out."

Farah clears her throat and finally speaks. " _You_. Are going to work in a _school_?"

"Yyyyyep."

"But isn't being a school officer all about…being _The Man_?"

Tina snorts. "Yousound like _Todd_."

"I'm just saying…" Farah's not sure how to put this gently. "Seattle P.D. and the public school system are going to have much stricter oversight than the Bergsberg sheriff's department."

Tina nods. "I know. And part of me just wants to just keep working with Hobbs forever. But ever since we all got shot I've been, y'know. Thinking. Thinking about my bucket list, and if I really want to be a sheriff's deputy in a long-term kind of way. And I know we've _barely_ talked about me moving here, but I did some, uh, exploratory Googling? And I read this ACLU report about school policing reform in Washington, and—"

"You read _what_?" 

Tina throws a ball of wadded-up wrapping paper at Farah, who ducks neatly. "You don't have to sound so _surprised_! I can research shit if I want to." 

"I know! I know you can. It's just that you...don't. Usually."

"I mean, yeah, but maybe I'm ready to change things up? Like, who knows, maybe they'll fire me for letting students smoke up under the bleachers, or for refusing to tase a kid, or not enforcing a bullshit dress code. But maybe they _won't_. Maybe...I might be able to make a difference, from the inside." She shrugs. "I know I don't have any special mojo like Dirk, but this job...maybe I can help some kids be where they’re supposed to be."

Farah considers the idea. "Holistic school emphasis officer?"

Tina shrugs again, fidgeting with the frayed cuff of her hoodie. Her hair is coming loose from its usual messy braid, while one of smaller braids, sparkling with festive red hair tinsel, dangles over the star tattoos on her brow. She’s not the sort of person Farah would’ve expected to fall for, if she’d expected to fall for anyone, and just looking at her fills Farah's chest with a wild, buoyant tenderness, like her heart might actually be expanding. It’s the opposite of a panic attack, though it leaves her with the same dry mouth and racing pulse. She swallows. "I think you might have more mojo than you know." Tina looks up at her. "You haven't even had your first day on the job and you've already helped one person be where she should be." 

Tina's eyes crinkle with the beginnings of a grin. "Yeah.” A pause. “You, uh...do mean _me,_ right?"

Farah's answer is to set the gift box safely aside before tackling Tina to the throw rug and kissing her breathless.

When they come up for air, Tina shifts, tangling their legs together and breathing into Farah's ear as she says, "I've already started looking for a place, but I haven't found anything yet…"

Confused, Farah lifts her head so that she can see Tina's face. "Oh! But—do you _want_ your own place? Because I thought—I guess I should have said, shouldn't just assume that you—or rather that _we_ —" She takes a slow breath. 

Tina's hands press a little tighter on the small of Farah's back, a warm anchor against her skin. "You okay there?"

Farah thinks about the sharp, new-cut key and the personalized home security code, both tucked inside the fancy edibles cookbook that waits for Tina under the tree. They _could_ have the talk right now. She _could_ insist that Tina open her present early, and they could run through the security protocols and set up biometrics. They could work out moving logistics, and clear a space for Tina's clothes in Farah’s closet, and get started on the million-and-one things they’ll have to do in the coming weeks. Only Farah doesn’t want to shatter this moment. There’ll be time for those things, and soon, but for now, all Farah wants is to show Tina how much this means to her. That they get to _have_ this. For now, she wants to make Tina understand that before they met, the idea of a connection like theirs seemed more absurd and improbable than all the other absurd, improbable things she’d seen—seemed not just impossible, but unimaginable. 

For now, Farah just nods, and says “I’m good,” before leaning in for another kiss. 

Tina kisses her back, hot and fierce, and rolls them over onto a pile of tissue paper and ribbon ends. Farah’s shriek of surprised laughter obscures the rustling of the bag full of lip balm as it’s kicked under the couch, forgotten. 

**Author's Note:**

> -Bonus feature: [Farah's Christmas Gift List (a bibliography)](https://juniper-and-lamplight.tumblr.com/post/180958864180/while-working-on-a-farahtina-christmas-fic-i)  
> -I did the bare minimum of research on School Emphasis Officers in Seattle; I’m fairly certain that Tina would never be hired for such a job in reality, but this is fiction, and I love to imagine her working with middle schoolers. (That ACLU report is real, though.)  
> -I’m still tiptoeing into this fic-writing lark, so please let me know if you liked this—it will help motivate me to finish the muuuuuch longer Farah/Tina fic I've been working on for months. And feel free to [find me on tumblr](https://juniper-and-lamplight.tumblr.com/) for further Farah/Tina feelings and general DGHDA love.


End file.
